RvV 20130104-IMG_9844 by Ralph vV, on FlickrThroughout the day, the vultures and marabou's would feast... Sometimes taking a break, by just falling over (as if dead), and resting. only to continue again later...

We were reminded once again how fragile life is! Even for such a magnificent beast... Nature can be soooo beautiful, but also so cruel. The circle of life....

The front part of the face is removed only, as you can see from the pics the ears etc is still there. The reason for this, is that the tusks are anchored in the upper jaw region, even as deep as a forearms length. The tusks can be removed after 3 to 7 days of degradation(Rotting) of the flesh, depending on heat by just twisting them out, but in this case, the tusks were removed as fast as possible, probably to ensure the safety of said tusks from grubby hands. It might have been a fair sized pair, and Sanparks removes all tusks from the veld to be registered as per regulation.

Thanx, it was fairly gruesome, but also very interesting to see the progression of the decay, the variety of vultures feeding, and the different patterns developing... The marabou's preferred the softer areas behind the front legs, where their long beaks could extract little rotting morsels. Scipio, you are quite right! The tusks were sizeable, and had to be removed asap... Once removed, it would be weighed, catalogued and stored...